Nocturnalities: Bargaining Beyond Rest is an artistic research project that aims to contextualise rest, exhaustion, anxiety and precarity in cultural labour, knowledge production and intimate strategies of care in the art world through publication, online REST Archive and public programme. It looks at sleep and consequently, rest through the performative forms of work –highlighting their communal impact and temporal boundaries. What can we learn from the capitalist co-option of sleep and its biopolitical strategies? How does lack of rest contribute to our mythologisation of certainty? And can art institutions take a sabbatical from their cultural production?

Open call

The project aims to give a platform for collaborators and their input on the rest strategies through different media. The first step will be to create the REST Archive: an open-source, submission-based archive, that serves as a virtual space, almost like a virtual body—an archive never at sleep—where viewers can explore different types of content related to the topic of rest. Submissions could be textual or/and visual translations of the topic that can be formatted within the printed matter. A selection of contributions will be included in the publication that is aimed to be launched in the fall of 2024.

Through an Open Call, we will open the project to a broader audience, and it will be announced in April 2024.

Mission

Nocturnalities aims to re-position this thought within the urges that we experience as artists and art practitioners in the Netherlands. The project has been conceptualised and developed by an Amsterdam-based team: artist and researcher Andrea Knezović in further collaboration with editor and publisher Agata Bar. By initiating Nocturnalities we bring the expertise of visual artists, thinkers, curators and Amsterdam-based policy makers and embrace the power of rest, self-care and regeneration. The project aims to bring together a discursive and creative dialogue between artists, institutions and art practitioners by creating a publication and an online archive that is a visual trance witnessing different voices regarding the topic within the local artistic ecologies. The project will involve a broad group of professional visual artists and cultural workers, academics and thinkers as well as cultural institutions. Through their participation in the production of the project: by inviting them to contribute to the publication, online platform and public programme, we aim to open opportunities for knowledge exchange concerning politics of rest and local working conditions, engaging in meetings and/or networking within the art world.

The project tackles the nature and rhythm of the current mentality of the artistic scene—reflecting the zeitgeist of this age’s socioeconomic and bio-political mechanism. Its initial intent is to unify the scattered voices of the art field and reach out in a dialogue that will ripple through different institutional and individual channels.

About

Andrea Knezović is a conceptual visual artist and researcher with an MRes in Artistic Research from the University of Amsterdam and a BA from the Academy of Visual Arts Ljubljana. Knezović’s research interests centre around the politics of care and negotiations of the ideological mechanisms of cognitive capitalism, its institutional implications and its mythological aspect. Her works have been exhibited across the world and are part of the museum collections, and she contributed to various discursive journals including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Thresholds Journal. She lives and works in Amsterdam, and is part of the 2023/2024 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice.

Agata Bar⁠⁠()⁠⁠ is a managing editor and publications producer based in Amsterdam, working primarily in the field of photography, art and culture. In the past years, she worked with Photomonth in Krakow, Unseen Amsterdam, Foam Magazine, Noor Images and Manifesta Biennale. In 2022, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she co-founded Stichting Growing Pains⁠⁠()⁠⁠, an Amsterdam-based publishing initiative that supports women and non-binary artists. Next to her freelance practice, she is also coordinating the Design Department at Sandberg Instituut (MA) in Amsterdam.

External Collaborators

Miquel Hervás Gómez, graphic designer and educator based on the WWW. Operating in the intersection of the contemporary discourse, publishing and visual communication. Tutor for Preparatory Course⁠⁠()⁠⁠ at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, as well as other international universities. Workshop specialist at the BB⁠⁠()⁠⁠. Active member of fanfare⁠⁠()⁠⁠ and former Carne Kids⁠⁠()⁠⁠.

Web development: François Girard-Meunier.

This project is supported by Mondriaan Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Stimuleringsfonds.

Typeface: Redaction, inspired by Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts⁠⁠()⁠⁠
and designed by Jeremy Mickel⁠⁠()⁠⁠.